Pay for the school, or the house, or both

Update: I evidently forgot to include the link of the article I was writing about! I have now included it. Hee hee. Oops.

Some of the school districts around here are called “basic aid” districts, meaning they get so much money from property taxes that they receive only “basic aid” from the state for their schools.

About 5 percent of the state’s 1,048 school districts are “basic-aid,” a designation that provides them with only minimal state funding because their property tax revenue is particularly high according to a complex state formula.

Sometimes it’s because of high residential real-estate values, as is the case with Palo Alto, Hillsborough, Saratoga and Los Gatos. Elsewhere, school districts such as Santa Clara are basic aid because of their large share of commercial or industrial property.

One of Gray Davis’s proposals for closing our budget shortfall was to take the excess funding from these districts and then return money to them. Homey didn’t play that; the plan was scrapped.

So these are well-funded districts, okay? But the state’s budget woes are affecting everyone, even the basic aid districts. So public schools are asking parents to contribute a little to their kids’ education.

With the school year under way, bake sales and box-top drives seem like a quaint vestige of the past. Today, public school parents are being pressed for cash — as much as $600 a child.

For some, the aggressive fundraising is turning what had been a goodwill gesture during boom times into something that feels more like an annual obligation.

The entreaties often frame the issue in simple terms, embroidered with guilt. Their theme: If you don’t contribute, your child’s education will suffer.

In Mountain View, elementary school parents this year have been asked to donate $200 a child. Los Gatos parents were asked for “one dollar a day,” or $365. Parents of Los Altos high school students last year were asked for $350 a student. This year, it’s $500.

I get to look forward to being hit up for contributions not only by the private schools I attended, but by my kids’ public schools? Neat.

“We cannot give $200 right now,” said Robin Kuborssy, whose daughter is a fourth-grader at Landels Elementary in Mountain View. Her husband recently quit his job to pursue a college degree.

“If you don’t give something, they call you on the phone,” said Kuborssy, who worries about how failing to contribute the $200 might affect her daughter at school. “I do feel like I need to do something.”

So she may contribute $50 and volunteer to work at fundraising efforts.

…who worries about how failing to contribute the $200 might affect her daughter at school…

There’s a technical term that means “hitting someone up for money with implied threats.” I’m sure I can come up with it if I think about it long enough…

I definitely had fears about what effect contributing money meant when I was in a private school in San Francisco. Lots of families could (and did) donate a whole bunch of money to the school. Mine contributed my full tuition and considered itself quits (understandably). Does the amount of money affect the school’s appraisal of a student? I don’t know. It’s not like the money’s coming in anonymously; they know who gave what.

Of course, above and beyond that, there are lots of districts filled with families who can’t come up with hundreds of dollars to give to their public school. So their schools will just be slashed even more.

We don’t have equal public education in this country.

What I dislike most about getting the parents to donate money is, of course, that it’s not exactly going to convince Sacramento to change what they’re doing about school funding.